problems with eregi (regex expressions) in php

tomer_shim

Hello,
i was trying to get URL's fetched from a file via eregi function. lets assume this was the original html code:

<href="http://www.testing.com/bla/bla111.html"><b><span class="Headline">testing1111aczxc222</span></b></a><br>testing bla bla return true;" 
<href="http://www.testing.com/bla/bla222.html"><b><span class="Headline">testing1111aczxc333</span></b></a><br>testing bla bla return true;" 
<href="http://www.testing.com/bla/bla333.html"><b><span class="Headline">testing1111aczxc444</span></b></a><br>testing bla bla return true;"

to grab at least the first url i tried to do something like this in the ereg IF statement:

if (eregi('<href=\"(.*)\"><b><span class=\"Headline\">',$line, $data)) {

but as a result i'm getting almost the hole original code, it matches the first <href=" with the LAST "> in the code, so i'm not getting what i need. How can i make it stop after it found a first match of "> and not go on untill the last one? how can i fix my code?

Thank you in advance for your help!!

etully

Your regexp is being greedy. It wants as much as it can get. Put a ? after the asterisk. This tells it to stop when it finds the first instance of

tomer_shim

I tried what u suggested:
On RegexBuddy: after i added ? after the asterisk, it still selected all the links and not only first.
On php: Warning: eregi(): REG_BADRPT in /home/***/testing.php on line 124

any idea how can i fix this?
thank you for trying to help me! 🙂

xblue

I don't think the ereg functions (POSIX regex) support ungreedy matching.

Option a: switch to the preg functions (PCRE), then you can use the syntax etully mentioned. Not much changes necessary, you only need to wrap the pattern into delimiters, e.g. a slash, and add the i for case insensitive matching after the trailing slash.

Option b: change your pattern by using e.g. [^"] instead of ., then you don't need ungreedy matching (But switch to the preg functions anyway, they are much more powerful and not much more complicated.)

etully

Sorry. My fault because I don't usually use eregi. I use preg_match which has different syntax. I just tested it and this works:

if (preg_match("/<href=\"(.*?)\">/",$string, $data))

You can still use eregi, just check the manual to see how to control greed when using that command. (All regexp functions have the concept of greed).

tomer_shim

etully i tried your second solution but it just show 0 (zero), i guess it didnt find nothing to match that statement.
as for your solutions Xblue, i tried them but it doesnt echo anything back. it only does with my original eregi statement.

Thank you both for trying to help me, i hope you have a fix for those solutions for me 🙂

xblue

etully wrote:
All regexp functions have the concept of greed

Are you sure? The manual says that the POSIX-extended regular expression do not support non-greedy matching, see http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.regex.php

etully

Xblue: Whenever my advice conflicts with the manual, trust the manual.

Tomer: Are you still having a problem? If so, are you using preg_match or eregi ?